Thoreau's Ecstatic Witness - Hardcover

Hodder, Alan D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300089597 ISBN 13: 9780300089592

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2001

Synopsis

When Henry David Thoreau died in 1862, friends and admirers remembered him as an eccentric man whose outer life was continuously fed by deeper spiritual currents. But scholars have since focused almost exclusively on Thoreau’s literary, political, and scientific contributions. This book offers the first in-depth study of Thoreau’s religious thought and experience. In it Alan D. Hodder recovers the lost spiritual dimension of the writer’s life, revealing a deeply religious man who, despite his rejection of organized religion, possessed a rich inner life, characterized by a sort of personal, experiential, nature-centered, and eclectic spirituality that finds wider expression in America today.

At the heart of Thoreau’s life were episodes of exhilaration in nature that he commonly referred to as his ecstasies. Hodder explores these representations of ecstasy throughout Thoreau’s writings―from the riverside reflections of his first book through Walden and the later journals, when he conceived his journal writing as a spiritual discipline in itself and a kind of forum in which to cultivate experiences of contemplative non-attachment. In doing so, Hodder restores to our understanding the deeper spiritual dimension of Thoreau’s life to which his writings everywhere bear witness.

About this title

About the Author:

Alan D. Hodder is associate professor of comparative religion at Hampshire College and author of Emerson’s Rhetoric of Revelation.

From Library Journal:

Literary students everywhere have read Thoreau's Walden and "Civil Disobedience" and warmed to his widely acclaimed musings on solitude, nature, and protest. But in this richly detailed study, Hodder (comparative literature, Hampshire Coll.; Emerson's Rhetoric of Revelation) pays scrupulous attention to what he considers the religious expression in Thoreau's work (including his journals); thus the use of the word ecstatic in the title. Hodder believes that much of that expression has been overlooked, with disproportionate critical attention being paid to Thoreau's literary, philosophical, and political concerns. He makes a convincing case that Thoreau's various designationsAas a nature writer, man of letters, and social criticAcome into better focus once his religious sensibility is factored into his character and work. As Hodder demonstrates, Thoreau was not a follower of institutional religion, believing fervently that rapture came from experience, not faith. But as an ascetic and a sensualist, he thought the natural world barren without a connection to the human spirit. This work is not always an easy readAit demands some knowledge of the writings of Thoreau and other TranscendentalistsAbut it is certainly worth the effort. Recommended for academic and large public libraries.ARobert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., IN
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0300089597
• ISBN 13: 9780300089592
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320